The first time I handed a litterer’s trash back to them lit a fire inside me. Car drivers littering is a constant. Some people think it is okay. Actually that’s an overstatement. The litterers don’t even think about it. They don’t consider consequences outside of their six-foot bubble of self. All they know is their trash is now out of sight, and their world is right.
The idea had been growing in my brain for some time. It was a quiet voice casually making suggestions in the back of my head every time I witnessed another tossing of fast food wrappers out a window. Maybe these car drivers need some Asshole Justice, and I can be that asshole.
It was late night - don’t remember the exact time or day of the week. I was coming home from a gig in Manhattan, guessing it was around 2am; even the party-people traffic had slowed. It was the regular route over the Williamsburg, cutting South on Driggs on my way to Lee, which becomes Nostrand when Williamsburg becomes Bed Stuy. When you pass Broadway there are two little blocks before Division, where you jog left to catch Lee. Those two little blocks have streetlights, and ahead of me was a van stopped at a red. I’m on the left side of the street - there are parked cars on both sides - and am thirty feet directly behind the driver’s side mirror when I see a hand hold a coffee cup outside the window and drop it as if into a bin, but the bin is the street. On a quiet night in New York you can hear a coffee cup clop clop ten yards away, and it called me to action.
The light changed, and the van crawled up the short block to the next red light. I picked up the empty coffee cup and sped ahead. His window was still open. I stopped, handed the coffee cup to him and said, “Oh, you dropped this.” He took it. There were four dudes with hoodies and short haircuts in there but nobody said shit. I nosed ahead of the van but stayed waiting at the red with him. It felt like an eternity. I didn’t want to turn around, so I casually looked to the side and tried to look back. I could see enough out of my periphery to spot the driver slowly, deliberately drop the cup onto the street again. I shook my head. The light changed; I pedaled off yet the van stayed. Before I made a left at the next intersection I saw the sliding door behind the driver’s side open. A man got out and picked up the cup.
New Yorkers and other city rats could probably guess why this whole exchange was hilarious. They were cops. When you see two or more healthy-looking 25-40 year-old white guys with crew cuts and generic hoodies just driving around, they are police. I didn’t know it when I saw the cup drop from behind. As soon as I approached the open window and saw inside, though, I knew at a glance. That’s the sole reason I waited at the red light with them. The plan was to pedal away as quickly as possible in case I triggered a psycho car brain. I had to call an audible and demonstrate that I’m not a dangerous rogue who needs to be stopped-and-frisked; I’m just a responsible citizen concerned about city ordinances. Littering is subject to a fine, and there are posted signs all over the city communicating this fact. I wasn’t about to blow through a red light and give these guys an easy justification to fuck my shit up.
The rest of the way home, reveling in my tiny act, I got curious about the chain of command. What was that conversation in the van after I handed the cup back and after the driver dropped it again? Who got out to pick it up — was it the cop in charge having a spine or the one do-gooder of the bunch? Not that it matters — one good apple doesn’t sweeten the bunch. These were the late-night idle thoughts as my heart pounded as I rode, exhilarated. I had crossed the threshold into being a bike wanker. The fun had just begun.